Longtime complaints about foul odors emanating from the Back River sewage treatment plant have intensified in recent months, with area residents declaring they’re the worst they’ve experienced in years.

“It goes from [rotten] eggs to poop to methane,” a woman protested at a raucous community meeting in Dundalk last September with a representative from the Baltimore Department of Public Works (DPW), which runs the plant.

“The stench is overwhelming,” a December Facebook post by the Back River Community Action Group declared, urging others who live within smelling-distance of the Baltimore County facility to demand answers from the city and state.

Another sign of trouble, residents say: the pollution warning lights positioned at the plant’s outfall pipe has been on and off for the last several weeks.

(Installed as part of a 2023 legal settlement with environmental groups, the lights flash red to warn that inadequately treated waste is being released into the river.)

“Red Light on Pier ACTIVATED for DAYS with ZERO public explanation!” an Action Group leader said on the December post. “This is UNACCEPTABLE!”

Now, longtime local activists think they may have an explanation based on the multiple calls they are getting recently from their sources describing crisis conditions at the sprawling facility.

Instead of being properly processed and trucked away, sewage sludge has been backing up at the facility – which has run out of internal storage space to contain it, they have been told.

Area waterman C.J. Canby, who crabs from the workboat Miss Paula and has long been vocal about water quality issues, says he has been getting urgent calls from people with knowledge of plant conditions who are afraid to speak about them publicly.

“They’re telling me right now the solids are not being processed correctly,” Canby told The Brew. “Some of them are slipping through, so you basically have solids – you know, human feces – that’s being allowed to pass through into Back River.”

“Solids are not being processed correctly . . . you basically have solids – you know, human feces – that’s being allowed to pass through into Back River” –  Waterman C. J. Canby.

Others tell The Brew they are hearing the same stories, about an overfilled facility storing sewage sludge on the ground and in the plant for months.

“No dump trucks are hauling away the sludge, hence all the very strong odors – it’s all over the property,” a person with knowledge of the situation told The Brew.

They described melting ice and snow causing improperly treated sewage to overflow into the waterway (“They can’t control it.”), “storage lagoons and concrete pads full” and “both storage equalization tanks out by 695 solid to the max.’”

Asked to respond, state officials had little to say.

“We are aware of these concerns and are looking into them,” MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said in a brief email to The Brew yesterday.

DPW has not yet provided its response to The Brew’s query. This story will be updated when received.

Synagro Halts Sludge Processing

Alice Volpitta, Blue Water Baltimore’s Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper, said she’s heard the second-hand reports about concerning conditions at the facility, but is not able to verify them by entering it.

“Since we’re not regulators, we don’t have the ability to just walk onsite and see what’s happening for ourselves,” she said, adding that MDE is aware of the concerns.

Volpitta noted that the reports about city sewage plant conditions (filed on a quarterly basis by an independent engineering firm as required by the consent decree) “don’t talk about excessive stockpiling of biosolids.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not happening, but I just haven’t seen evidence of that on those reports,” she said.

• “Advocates call sludge-clogged Back River sewage plant “a ticking time bomb” (3/20/23)

• Back River’s sewage sludge problems were well known for years (3/20/23)

But Volpitta pointed to one relevant concern that is highlighted in the latest reports:

Synagro Technologies, the third-party contractor that converts bio-sludge into fertilizer pellets onsite, has stopped processing the material since at least September.

The report indicated that change occurred after the September 15 fire that broke out in one of the dryers, which followed a March 2023 fire at the same Synagro Back River operation.

“The Synagro team has raised concerns about the quality of biosolids entering the dryer, citing a potential presence of hydrocarbons,” the November report by Rockville-based TYLin said.

“Both Synagro and the City are conducting testing to evaluate this issue and have suspended the pelletization process while this testing is ongoing,” the report noted.

As of the February report, Synagro still was not processing the sewage sludge.

Watchdog’s View

While Volpitta had no information on the current situation, her watchdog group has been deeply involved in policing the troubled Back River facility, and the city’s other sewage plant, the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant.

In 2021, Blue Water Baltimore’s routine monitoring led to the discovery that millions of gallons of partially-treated human waste were being illegally released every day by the two plants.

In 2022, state regulators took control of the plants, after MDE inspectors found shocking conditions, including equipment clogged with backed-up solids and holding tanks with so much material they had reeds, grasses and other vegetation growing in them.

In 2023, the lawsuit the group filed, with its lawyers the Chesapeake Legal Alliance, led to a 2023 consent decree and a maximum $4.75 million fine.

“Strategically stockpiling biosolids on the site is a permitted activity – as long as it’s done in the right way”  – Alice Volpitta, Blue Water Baltimore.

Asked about the current situation, Volpitta said Back River is grappling with an issue that poses safety concerns – the presence of excess hydrocarbons in the sludge.

“In the meantime, they have to do something with the biosolids,” she observed.

“There’s other things that they can do with it,” she continued. “And they can strategically stockpile it on the site, that’s a permitted activity – as long as it’s done in the right way.”